P-357 - Assessing Working Memory in two Arabic Cultures: Evidence From Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Abstract

Introduction:

To date, few studies have examined the extent to which the performances of Working Memory (WM) tasks vary with cultural and demographic variations.

Objective:

The present study compared the performance between Kuwaiti and Egyptian children at grade 4 using a WM battery comprising six tasks, which measures both verbal and visuospatial WM.

Method:

The Arabic Automated WM Battery (Alloway, 2007) was administered to a 384 primary school children: 192 Kuwaitis (96 males and 96 females) and 192 Egyptians (96 males and 96 females).

Results:

The WM construct has the same factorial structure across the Kuwaiti and Egyptian cultures. Moreover, a significant difference between groups on 5 out of 6 WM tests, but no significant gender differences in (listening recall, counting recall, backward digit recall, Mr. X and spatial span), Furthermore, the backward digit recall task varied as a function of gender across cultures.

Conclusion:

The factor structure of the Automated WM battery was validated across the two Arab cultures. Although this study was conducted in two collectivistic cultures, it refers to the impact of the sociocultural context on both verbal and visuospatial WM performance. However, the effects of size were low, which reflects a limited impact. This finding is useful for depicting cognitive profiles of these collectivistic cultures. Future research in this area should expand our investigations to a number of collectivistic Arab cultures and extend the comparison to include analytic culture.